Watching them live is like watching a brilliant sexual encounter. It begins
strongly, with an excitement that is made to seem spontaneous. There is a wealth
of stage movement. The singer, of course the lone female, is a siren, with an
impressive vocal range capable of moving from sensual to playful to dominating
in a single breath. She cracks her hand throughout the act, as if she should be
holding awhip. The show builds to the point where the climactic song - "Sex" -
is just another in a series of wonderful moments. More fulfilling, perhaps,
but typically fulfilling. It ends with singer and songwriter together,
declaring their roles, moving as one. It all looks like the ultimate nightmare
of the middle-class parent. Surely no parent would admit to fathering and
mothering these children.
Off-stage and in interview, singer Terri Nunn, her hair done in black and
white, wears a black skirt that Tarzan would have found risque, slit up the sides
almost to the waist. Songwriter John Crawford, also in black, is soft-spoken,
sounding less forceful but just as honest as he does on Berlin's Pleasure
Victim EP and the latest album Love Life. They're both so composed,
so friendly, "so handsome, so pretty," as middle-class parents would perhaps say.
They have, together and separately, achieved the dream of the middle-class angry
youth: Break out of the boxed in frame of reference and reach success your own
way.
"My parents were putting me into that little world where everything had to be
the same. Where I come from - Orange County (California) - everybody looks the
same. Everybody drives the same kind of car, wears the same suit to work, and
the kids go to the same school and wear the same jeans from the Gap," says
Crawford.
Even though the band's success was achieved after that break from convention,
Crawford admits that he did learn from his parents sense of realism.
"I'm not gonna just chuck my parents and their thoughts because I really
respect what they believe in and they were right," admits Crawford. "I mean
music is so precarious that you can't put all your - silly cliche - eggs in
one basket in music. Even if you do what you do and you're fantastic at it,
that doesn't ensure success. I don't blame (my parents). I have no bitterness
towards them at all for that. I just know that it's because of where they
come from."
Berlin has managed to reach the desired ends through the desired means.
This has created an eye-opening experience for Crawford. To him, one of the
best things about success is that it lets you travel to more exotic locales.
Like New York, for instance.
"People in New York think they may die at any minute so they live as hard
as they can. In L.A., people are trying to live forever, so they're going
slow. They all think they're going slow so they can be immortal," he says.
Apparently, the atmosphere Crawford feels in New York is perfect for him:
it's big, scary, wild, real, full of challenges.
Terri Nunn belongs in New York as well. Her middle-class upbringing was
perhaps not as stuffy as Crawford's - her father is a fairly liberated artist -
but to her it was, in a way, stifling. So much so that is helped forge her
attitude that challenges must be taken regardless of how comfortable the
equilibrium is. She prefers life on the edge.
She also appreciates honesty, a quality she tries to bring across in her
singing style and in her lyrics, like those on the band's biggest hit
"Sex (I'm a)."
"I wrote the lyrics based on the sexual communication that I find
difficult in relationships which is communicating desires and fantasies to
a man. Much more difficult than doing any of it is talking about it.
And we decided to be very straightforward about the song," says Nunn.
But honesty is often open to misinterpretation. This song about
communicating desires is not a song about loose sex, but rather honest,
loving sex. With all her "liberation" she is, at her roots, fairly
old-fashioned.
"I kind of wish I was born in the eighteen-hundreds, when sex wasn't
easy. So because a man and a woman really couldn't do that, they did
become intimate because that was the only other avenue to really get
to know a person... Now you have sex first and then intimacy may come if
you're lucky," she says.
The ironic thing is that with all the respect for their parent's
realities, the belief in some good old-fashioned attitudes, and a taste
of money and success, the members of Berlin may find themselves part
of a burgeoning young middle class.
After all, success does have a way of changing even some of the most
stubborn conventions.
"Now, (my parents) follow me like it was when I was in Little League,"
says Crawford.